Woody's Profiterole

Nothing could warm the heart of a lit major more than to revel in the success of Woody Allen's latest, a salut d'amor to the City of Lights, Midnight in Paris.

Midnight in Paris is Woody Allen's 42nd feature in 45 years, since his debut with 1966's What's Up Tiger Lily? (although there was a 3-year gap until his second film, Take the Money and Run). Midnight in Paris was also the apt, out-of-competition opener for this year's Cannes Film Festival and is an interesting contrast to another auteur film that also debuted at Cannes -- and subsequently won the Palme d'Or --Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, which is only Malick's fifth feature in 38 years. Say what you might about Woody Allen, anyone who can make a feature film every year for 4+ decades is not precious, and since moving away from New York stories -- especially with the excellent morality tale Match Point and the overlapping triangles of troubled love in Vicky Cristina Barcelona -- his later work has been infused with both new energy and Euro financing.

Midnight in Paris opens with a scenic montage of the city, much like 1979's Manhattan did with images of that city. The glory of Paris cannot help but stir the longings of anyone who's been there -- is it even possible for a person of artistic sensibilities to visit Paris and not fantasize about living there? (My answer is non.)

Owen Wilson as stars Gil Pender, a writer/Woody-manqué, the maestro himself well beyond the age when he could credibly play this sort of protagonist. Gil and his ill-matched fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams), are tag-along guests of her reactionary parents, moneyed francophobes who view Gil in the dimmest of lights. While their daughter admires Gil for his "success," it appears that she has no appreciation for his needs as an artist -- he's struggling with his first novel, set in the milieu of a nostalgia shop. Gil fantasizes about living the life of a real writer in 1920s Paris, living in a garret and walking the city in the rain, while Inez is mentally moving them forward, to relentlessly sunny Malibu. Despite their shared blond tresses, Gil seems muted, and it's Inez who seems to carry a glow wherever she goes -- pumped with her energy, their hotel suite blazes with gold, like a pastry crust cooked to perfection.

As if the snide in-laws weren't burden enough for Gil, they run into an Paul, a pompous know-it-all friend of Inez's whom she holds in absurd regard, played to smug perfection by Michael Sheen (whom I spotted in the lobby of my theater a few days ago). Paul holds forth with unselfconscious grandiosity on the subjects of French wine, architecture and art (he even has the gall to argue with a Musée Rodin guide -- played by France's real-life First Lady, Carla Bruni -- about whether Camille Claudel was Rodin's wife or mistress. Mon dieu!)

(Paul's a relative of the pontificator on line to see The Sorrow & the Pity behind Alvy & Annie in Annie Hall, the same blowhard Marshall McLuhan puts so neatly in his place, and the filmed fantasy of many of us forced to overhear the conversations of others in a confined space. Truth be told, though, I'm almost nostalgic for intellectually pretentious remarks in this era, where all we get is the banality of continuous cell phone chats, most of which I crave to be in a language other than English to better ignore the sheer mediocrity of them.)

Fleeing from the continued ordeal of Paul's overbearing expertise, which is about to be wed with the horror of dancing, and tipsy from an evening of sampling vin rouge, Gil makes his own way into the night, walking the cobblestone streets with only a perfunctory concern as to whether he's lost or not. At the stroke of midnight Gil is found by a vintage car full of revelers who stop and entice Gil to join their group. I'm loathe to say more about this group, except to note that Gil has the time of his life and rejoins them on subsequent nights, at last finding the kindred spirits missing from his own life.

Without giving too much away, Midnight in Paris addresses issues of longing and feelings of "otherness" often exorcized in art. As much of a waste of time it is to be nostalgic for one's own past, imagine what a soul-exhausting exercise it is to carry the torch of nostalgia for an era in which you have no place whatsoever? As my mother used to famously say (to me, at least) about the 1950s nostalgia that cropped up in the 1970s (Happy Days, anyone?), what was so great about the Korean War and McCarthyism? In other words, one woman's Belle Époque is another man's nightmare world without antibiotics.

Or, I can bemoan the ubiquitousness of instantaneous communication as being of inverse proportion to people actually having anything to say by typing these lines on a laptop computer at a coffee shop with free wifi, perhaps an equivalent, in this era, to a 1920s brasserie, non?  You will have to see the delightful Midnight in Paris and decide for yourself.